~ firearms and fermentation

California Bills Introduced To Eliminate Detachable Magazines

I noticed California has introduced legislation to require semi-automatic rifles to have their magazines permanently attached or they would have to be registered as assault rifles. The bills are AB-1663 and AB-1664.

Here is my favorite quote by the bills author, David Chiu, “Detachable magazines cost lives, and it is more important to save lives during future mass shootings than to be able to reload assault weapons in the blink of an eye.”

Chiu and the supporters of this bill just do not seem to understand legislation on a firearm or detachable magazine is only going to further restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens. Criminals are not going to register firearms and are not going to worry about detachable magazines and bullet buttons. For those who may not know the current CA law the magazine can be removed with a tool and that is often called a bullet button. What they are trying to do with this legislation is restrict magazine capacities to 10 rounds and have the magazine permanently affixed to the firearm. The issue is rifles are only used in crimes 1.4% of the time on average and of those no one really knows how many are AR-15, single shot, lever action, bolt action, etc. Even if we assume every single one of the 1.4% is an AR then you are talking about restricting the magazine to 10 rounds. How exactly will this stop crime? In the press they have pointed to San Bernardino, but based on the fact the firearms were obtained illegally and then modified this would do nothing to stop a terrorist or a criminal because they would simply not follow the law. By definition they are criminals and terrorists and breaking laws is what they do. Why can’t people understand criminals are not going to follow the laws, the only people following laws are law-abiding citizens and tying their hands with legislation such as this is asinine. If this passes we will soon enter a period where criminals are armed better than citizens. This is not a winning strategy!